Sunday, 20 April 2008
Wednesday, 2 April 2008
Wednesday, 26 March 2008
Monday, 17 March 2008
Indeterminacy and the roaming body; a non-present potential to vary.
How often have you been in conversation with someone in the street, when you are visited by the feeling that this person with whom you are dynamically engaged would rather be somewhere else, or indeed that while ostensibly they appear to be with you, they have actually already left the scene?
How often have you been in conversation with someone in the street when you are visited by the feeling that despite the dynamic shared with this person, (If not a stranger to you, is this scenario more or less likely to occur?) either;
you would rather be somewhere else
you have to be somewhere else
you have trouble being fully committed to the moment
your inner ear is listening more closely to your internal dialogue and the compulsion to leave
your body is restless
your intent is sliding away
your presence in this space is becoming virtual
actually, you are still partially here but your roaming body has already left
the above states do not necessarily have anything to do with the person with whom you are talking ...
Have you never had an intimation of any of these suspicions?
How often have you been in conversation with someone in the street when you are visited by the feeling that despite the dynamic shared with this person, (If not a stranger to you, is this scenario more or less likely to occur?) either;
you would rather be somewhere else
you have to be somewhere else
you have trouble being fully committed to the moment
your inner ear is listening more closely to your internal dialogue and the compulsion to leave
your body is restless
your intent is sliding away
your presence in this space is becoming virtual
actually, you are still partially here but your roaming body has already left
the above states do not necessarily have anything to do with the person with whom you are talking ...
Have you never had an intimation of any of these suspicions?
Wednesday, 12 March 2008
Indeterminacy and the Parallax View, Qualia and the Unseen
This post appears as a continuation of the previous post, while exploring some specific perspectives on the issue of Henri Bergson`s 'becoming' as distinct from 'being'. I would like to suggest that there may be some alternative ways of seeing and understanding evidence of indeterminate subliminal movement as this hovers on the edge of visibility in the individual and how this manifestation affects meetings and engagements with other individuals. One could say that perhaps this is indeterminacy itself, made visible through subliminal movement as a condition which affects us all, impinging upon and mediating both, our behaviour and how we perceive our behaviour (perhaps best seen as reflected in others) in everyday life, particularly in urban surroundings. (I locate my observations in these surroundings because I believe that urban spaces are instrumental in stimulating, exacerbating and importantly for my work, mediating meetings with one another, in ways which are identifiably different and separate from non-urban environments).
In my last post I referenced two definitions of the term, 'indeterminacy'. The first, (the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle) which is founded in quantum mechanics, asserts that both the position (static?) and momentum (movement) of a given particle (person?) cannot be determined simultaneously. In other words it could be said that one is unable to measure, empirically, activity (I read passivity as still active) by one body taking place in two situations at once.
Is this true? If one cannot measure something does this make the non-finding absolute? And if so, despite the physical non-finding does this mean that one`s 'attention' cannot be in two places at once? Or one`s desires, intent, perception? I suspect that this is not the case. Much of my posting on this blog supports this view. In fact, I am suggesting that, through a state of becoming, it is actually possible to transfer ones presence from 'here' to 'there' simultaneously and that there is physical, visible evidence for this in scenarios involving engagement between people in the street.
In the second definition, Brian Massumi, in Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Post-Contemporary Interventions) (2002), p.5, tells us that a body in motion is held within an ever-changing process of movement relative to its own already non-static position in space, ('... its own non-present potential to vary ...'). Massumi, (in a vein I believe, which is similar to Bergson) maintains that the only 'real' relation is that of a body to its own indeterminacy, (... its openness to an elsewhere and otherwise that it is, in any here and now.')
Does Massumi`s definition refute the first definition, despite the apparent inability to be able to measure two presences (or one divided presence) simultaneously? Massumi`s concept seems to me not to be averse to Bergson and his stance on the continual process of 'becoming'.
I am interested in these observations - one arrived at scientifically and empirically, the other arrived at (as far as I am aware) through critical observation. In a world which I contend is underpinned by so much indeterminacy, I tend to be cautious of regimen which apparently affirm only absolutes. However, empirically defined rules and their associated criteria have some things going for them: they can be evidenced and therefore, apparently (but not necessarily irrefutably) proven. My interests lie in observing and recording certain aspects of behaviour which lie at the very edge of our sensing, which makes the task of demonstrating the presence of these aspects somewhat sketchy - not a very scientific term, but one very familiar to the arts and indicative of describing a process of investigation which is not cursory, but intensely focussed and exploratory which can and should, through its inherent rigour, be demonstrably valid as evidence.
I would like to introduce two terms which, by presenting another perspective on how social interaction may be perceived, might contribute to the validity of the sketches/strategies with which I am involved. The first of these terms deals with the Parallax View:
The Parallax View
According to Slavoj Zizek, in The Parallax View, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London England (2006) p.17, the standard definition of 'parallax' is: '... the apparent displacement of an object (the shift of its position against a background), caused by a change in observational position that provides a new line of sight.'
According to Zizek then, the parallax view differs from the quantum mechanics definition above in the sense that the parallax view is an apparent visually-witnessed physical displacement caused by the viewer changing their point of perspective. Therefore what is 'real' is up for grabs. What is 'here' or 'there' or 'over there now' is simultaneously judged as 'real' by our perception. In the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle there is an inability to measure the presence of an entity/object/subject existing in two places at once in physical actuality. It is not an issue of perception. It is apparently an issue of objective physicality.
Zizek goes on to say that in his definition of the parallax view, there is a philosophical twist which can be added which sees the observed difference in viewpoints being not simply subjective, because the object being observed 'out there' is seen from two different locations or viewpoints - from the perspective of the viewer and also from that of the object being viewed.
Zizek refers to this objective ability as a kind of 'materialism'. Here, Zizek cites Lacan, maintaining that the subject`s gaze is always already inscribed into the perceived object itself - and that the object returns this gaze. Rather than ourselves being an all-seeing eye, observers who can grasp the entire 'picture' of a given reality, '... Materialism (the concept of object as being imbued with perception) means that the reality I see is never "whole" - not because a large part of it eludes me, but because it contains a stain, a blind spot, which indicates my inclusion in it.' (p.17). Does this imply a perception which accepts the existence of one observer being able to perceive an object from two viewpoints simultaneously because they themselves, are intrinsically contained in the view they are viewing? Hegel, Zizek points out, would say that through this, the subject and object are '... inherently mediated ...' (p.17) by their respective viewpoints - the subjective and objective.
Zizek goes on to introduce the idea of the 'parallax gap'. Zizek defines this as '... the unknown X, the noumenal core of the object beyond appearances, for what is, "in you more than yourself"'(p.18). This intimates essential but unseen territory and/or qualities therein, perhaps sometimes felt, yet elusive and - indeterminate. Zizek seeks to replace the binary opposites of Yin and Yang with perhaps a manifestation which is more relevant and as an entity with object status, more dynamic - the parallax gap, the gap which separates the One from itself. The gap is defined itself, as an object - an object verb - the unseen middle ground between two opposing fields.
The correlation I want to make here is inherent in the suggestion that indeterminacy or 'becoming' within the context of my work is itself, a state redolent with change; with both, actual movement and perceived movement (are these both 'real'?) and as such, a state embracing parallax properties. Due to our time-based lives, governed by continual states of 'becoming', I believe that simultaneous, multiple perceptions and perspectives exist within the parallax gap, between what could be termed at least initially, a binary field of engagement between two entities or people in the street. The parallax gap is the coefficient (def: a constant that is a measure of a property of a substance) beneath the scenario and rather than the 'glue' it may be more apt to describe it as the 'dissolver' of the moment, the constant indeterminacy in residence.
Which brings me to my next term:
Qualia - (plural, the singular is 'Quale')
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/
A phenomenological term used to describe, very subjectively, how we feel about/recognize sensations which cannot be witnessed, but which are real to the individual. Philosophers often use the term to refer to the introspectively accessible, phenomenal aspects of our mental lives. In this broad descriptor of the term it can be difficult to deny the existence of qualia. The status of qualia is vigorously debated in philosophical circles because it is central to a proper understanding of the nature of consciousness. Qualia are at the heart of issues surrounding the subject of body-mind.
I am wondering if that subliminal feeling which sometimes assails us - that we are already 'leaving', departing from an engagement which might be only very recently begun, may qualify as a quale? Perhaps, only someone seeing the world with eyes similar to mine, noticing that oh, so vague and obscure behavioural trait of indeterminate behaviour - continually moving on and away from engagement between two people, might align themselves with such a suggestion. Perhaps, only that kind of 'someone' might perceive the almost imperceptible signs and interpret them in this way - unless of course I suggest that, as with qualia, the presentiment of leaving is within each of us, internally experienced even if usually occurring subliminally or possibly denied and discouraged within self as anti-social. I do not consider it so. I believe it to be simply part of a greater continually-occurring condition which governs us as sentient beings constantly tugging at us, drawing us away in the midst of our functioning within time and spaces.
In my last post I referenced two definitions of the term, 'indeterminacy'. The first, (the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle) which is founded in quantum mechanics, asserts that both the position (static?) and momentum (movement) of a given particle (person?) cannot be determined simultaneously. In other words it could be said that one is unable to measure, empirically, activity (I read passivity as still active) by one body taking place in two situations at once.
Is this true? If one cannot measure something does this make the non-finding absolute? And if so, despite the physical non-finding does this mean that one`s 'attention' cannot be in two places at once? Or one`s desires, intent, perception? I suspect that this is not the case. Much of my posting on this blog supports this view. In fact, I am suggesting that, through a state of becoming, it is actually possible to transfer ones presence from 'here' to 'there' simultaneously and that there is physical, visible evidence for this in scenarios involving engagement between people in the street.
In the second definition, Brian Massumi, in Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Post-Contemporary Interventions) (2002), p.5, tells us that a body in motion is held within an ever-changing process of movement relative to its own already non-static position in space, ('... its own non-present potential to vary ...'). Massumi, (in a vein I believe, which is similar to Bergson) maintains that the only 'real' relation is that of a body to its own indeterminacy, (... its openness to an elsewhere and otherwise that it is, in any here and now.')
Does Massumi`s definition refute the first definition, despite the apparent inability to be able to measure two presences (or one divided presence) simultaneously? Massumi`s concept seems to me not to be averse to Bergson and his stance on the continual process of 'becoming'.
I am interested in these observations - one arrived at scientifically and empirically, the other arrived at (as far as I am aware) through critical observation. In a world which I contend is underpinned by so much indeterminacy, I tend to be cautious of regimen which apparently affirm only absolutes. However, empirically defined rules and their associated criteria have some things going for them: they can be evidenced and therefore, apparently (but not necessarily irrefutably) proven. My interests lie in observing and recording certain aspects of behaviour which lie at the very edge of our sensing, which makes the task of demonstrating the presence of these aspects somewhat sketchy - not a very scientific term, but one very familiar to the arts and indicative of describing a process of investigation which is not cursory, but intensely focussed and exploratory which can and should, through its inherent rigour, be demonstrably valid as evidence.
I would like to introduce two terms which, by presenting another perspective on how social interaction may be perceived, might contribute to the validity of the sketches/strategies with which I am involved. The first of these terms deals with the Parallax View:
The Parallax View
According to Slavoj Zizek, in The Parallax View, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London England (2006) p.17, the standard definition of 'parallax' is: '... the apparent displacement of an object (the shift of its position against a background), caused by a change in observational position that provides a new line of sight.'
According to Zizek then, the parallax view differs from the quantum mechanics definition above in the sense that the parallax view is an apparent visually-witnessed physical displacement caused by the viewer changing their point of perspective. Therefore what is 'real' is up for grabs. What is 'here' or 'there' or 'over there now' is simultaneously judged as 'real' by our perception. In the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle there is an inability to measure the presence of an entity/object/subject existing in two places at once in physical actuality. It is not an issue of perception. It is apparently an issue of objective physicality.
Zizek goes on to say that in his definition of the parallax view, there is a philosophical twist which can be added which sees the observed difference in viewpoints being not simply subjective, because the object being observed 'out there' is seen from two different locations or viewpoints - from the perspective of the viewer and also from that of the object being viewed.
Zizek refers to this objective ability as a kind of 'materialism'. Here, Zizek cites Lacan, maintaining that the subject`s gaze is always already inscribed into the perceived object itself - and that the object returns this gaze. Rather than ourselves being an all-seeing eye, observers who can grasp the entire 'picture' of a given reality, '... Materialism (the concept of object as being imbued with perception) means that the reality I see is never "whole" - not because a large part of it eludes me, but because it contains a stain, a blind spot, which indicates my inclusion in it.' (p.17). Does this imply a perception which accepts the existence of one observer being able to perceive an object from two viewpoints simultaneously because they themselves, are intrinsically contained in the view they are viewing? Hegel, Zizek points out, would say that through this, the subject and object are '... inherently mediated ...' (p.17) by their respective viewpoints - the subjective and objective.
Zizek goes on to introduce the idea of the 'parallax gap'. Zizek defines this as '... the unknown X, the noumenal core of the object beyond appearances, for what is, "in you more than yourself"'(p.18). This intimates essential but unseen territory and/or qualities therein, perhaps sometimes felt, yet elusive and - indeterminate. Zizek seeks to replace the binary opposites of Yin and Yang with perhaps a manifestation which is more relevant and as an entity with object status, more dynamic - the parallax gap, the gap which separates the One from itself. The gap is defined itself, as an object - an object verb - the unseen middle ground between two opposing fields.
The correlation I want to make here is inherent in the suggestion that indeterminacy or 'becoming' within the context of my work is itself, a state redolent with change; with both, actual movement and perceived movement (are these both 'real'?) and as such, a state embracing parallax properties. Due to our time-based lives, governed by continual states of 'becoming', I believe that simultaneous, multiple perceptions and perspectives exist within the parallax gap, between what could be termed at least initially, a binary field of engagement between two entities or people in the street. The parallax gap is the coefficient (def: a constant that is a measure of a property of a substance) beneath the scenario and rather than the 'glue' it may be more apt to describe it as the 'dissolver' of the moment, the constant indeterminacy in residence.
Which brings me to my next term:
Qualia - (plural, the singular is 'Quale')
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/
A phenomenological term used to describe, very subjectively, how we feel about/recognize sensations which cannot be witnessed, but which are real to the individual. Philosophers often use the term to refer to the introspectively accessible, phenomenal aspects of our mental lives. In this broad descriptor of the term it can be difficult to deny the existence of qualia. The status of qualia is vigorously debated in philosophical circles because it is central to a proper understanding of the nature of consciousness. Qualia are at the heart of issues surrounding the subject of body-mind.
I am wondering if that subliminal feeling which sometimes assails us - that we are already 'leaving', departing from an engagement which might be only very recently begun, may qualify as a quale? Perhaps, only someone seeing the world with eyes similar to mine, noticing that oh, so vague and obscure behavioural trait of indeterminate behaviour - continually moving on and away from engagement between two people, might align themselves with such a suggestion. Perhaps, only that kind of 'someone' might perceive the almost imperceptible signs and interpret them in this way - unless of course I suggest that, as with qualia, the presentiment of leaving is within each of us, internally experienced even if usually occurring subliminally or possibly denied and discouraged within self as anti-social. I do not consider it so. I believe it to be simply part of a greater continually-occurring condition which governs us as sentient beings constantly tugging at us, drawing us away in the midst of our functioning within time and spaces.
Friday, 15 February 2008
Purchase in encounters through, or despite Indeterminacy?
Ongoing notes and questions:
dict def: 'Indeterminacy principle' - a principle in quantum mechanics holding that it is impossible to determine, both the position and momentum of a particle at the same time' (Also called Heisenberg uncertainty principle).
def: 'Indeterminacy' as defined by Brian Massumi in the context of the body relative to its own indeterminate state, in Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Post-Contemporary Interventions), 2002, Duke University Press, p5, as: '... (its openness to an elsewhere and otherwise than it is, in any here and now).' (see previous November 07 post).
In my last post in November of 2007, I had reached a point of involvement with the notion that inexorably perhaps, we are affected by indeterminacy as a characteristic which underpins the nature and substance of our meetings with people in urban spaces.
On the main page of my blog I have included a quotation from Buddha:
‘What is the appropriate behaviour for a man or a woman in the midst of this world, where each person is clinging to his piece of debris? What`s the proper salutation between people as they pass each other in this flood?’ Buddha. Human Givens. vol 14, (3) Human Givens Publishing Ltd, East Sussex, England, UK
I am following a line of thought which posits that each meeting or encounter with another in the streets, is a moment of establishing a temporary purchase in the tide of humanity which surrounds us. A temporary purchase in time. How do we salute, greet, converse with one another in such an environment?
I am considering the alignment of the distinctly experiential and process-orientated realities of Henri Bergson, Brian Massumi and Len Lye (see November 2007 post) and their concepts of 'becoming' as opposed to
'being' with the above definition of the 'indeterminacy principle': the immutable integrity (soundness) of an apparently 'present' location perceived inseparably with that of its simultaneous already-generated momentum - on and away from its own 'present' state - a condition of constant erosion of that immutability within and of its so-called fixed position. An ever-diminished and renewed and re-diminished point of purchase. Is this a reality in urban spaces? Is this a fractal of our wider life or limited only to swift encounters in the street? Is the practice of our wider life as sentient beings in fact, ruled by indeterminacy - even within our so-called daily 'routines'? If so, does this imply that all the affairs of our lives are fated to be coloured by a vague sense of insecurity, uncertainty, an indefinable sense of something just missed?
Perhaps not. I am aware that the criteria and qualities of flux, momentum, departure, movement away, can be seen equally to juxtapose their opposites: pause, stasis, arrival, movement toward - and this describes a more optimistic perspective of human relations in urban precincts. Yet, I am not a pessimist by nature. Rather than viewing the two hemispheres of behaviour as competing with one another, one being 'better ' than the other, I prefer to perceive aspects of the latter existing in the former to create the whole. Not a negative viewpoint, but instead, an acknowledgement to the potency of change and indeed, time. The definition on indeterminacy above, makes clear the allegiance of matter to the concept of 'time'. Time, it might be said, adheres to corporeal, tangible matter which in turn is constantly affected by those things which 'time' decides to impact upon it. I cannot ignore aspects of time within my own response-making. Decisions must be made as to how to embed my observations, efforts and critiquing into a time-frame. (Hold that thought.)
I am faced with the possibilities and in turn, the challenges, that an immersion in this tide, within a given time-frame may provide for me. How do I make dance work about this paradoxical (in the sense that we also seem to gravitate towards people) - movement away existing in meetings between people in the street?
Why am I doing this? What is it that I find fascinating about encounters and exchanges between people which owe their allegiance, not to a baseline which relies upon a positive, if temporary communion; but a manifestation which could be said to be negative, symptomatic of loss, leaving and parting? So the communion is ephemeral, insubstantial, perhaps even ineffable - a mere perch, just out of reach of Buddha`s 'flood' and only temporary, at that.
To continue my side of the debate identified above, I am curious about the tensions existing in the fabric of this relationship: I choose to see every arrival containing the seeds of departure. Every arrival is swayed by an undercurrent of the momentum of leaving. As we engage with the process of arrival, we assert our presence/insert ourselves into a place, space, connection with someone, NOW. But 'now' is already in our wake. The present is already diminishing to materialise in the more encompassing state of 'becoming'. So 'becoming' is governed by almost anything which is non-static. Movement away - movement surely, toward the next ensuing moment and destination but movement away, nonetheless.
If I pursue this direction I may take it that each time we meet with and intend, apparently voluntarily, to converse with someone in the street, this meeting is suffused with uncertainty, the outcome hidden in a myriad of chance elements; the meeting may be said to be governed by efforts (or initially, choices) to reach out across the current, as it were, of indeterminacy to gain some kind of purchase through establishing some common ground, while simultaneously and unusually unwittingly, being in the act of 'becoming' - of moving away. I mention choices, yet, whether or not we choose to actively and fully engage with someone, I believe the 'climate' of each encounter is still mediated by uncertainty through change - and indeterminacy. Perhaps it is important to define here, associations between uncertainty and indeterminacy? For me, within the context of this research, indeterminants in the process of engagement give rise to uncertainty - uncertain outcomes and also a process of a simply, 'not-knowing' while the experience is unfolding. Under these conditions it is not surprising that sometimes people leave an encounter feeling unfulfilled, unless as sentient beings we are used to such a state from long practice.
What constitutes a meeting between people?
Chance/planning, agreement/disagreement, accord/dischord, protocols, personal and cultural imperatives/influences/prejudices/insights; the body and its needs, weather of feeling and outward manifestations like speech, expression and gesticulation; the climate of the day and of the moment; the desire to be here and to be elsewhere, both. Indeterminacy is present I believe, in all of the above and furnishes us with a subliminal level of movement away ... movement away from the person in front of us, movement away from the desire to be here, movement away from a moment of purchase.
It appears that indeterminacy is a catalyst for chaos, for discomfort, for uncertainty. Perhaps, but the focus on improvisation in my dance work also asserts that it is a liberating factor. An undercurrent which is ever-present but which can provide us with a truth - no thing is certain but that is all right. So perhaps while struggling to gain a purchase on the moment within a meeting, acceptance of this realisation - that each meeting moment is in a state of 'becoming' may assist us, not in struggling against, but instead, going with the waters in which we are immersed. Indeterminacy as mediator.
To make work from this I must document these moments of pause, in ways which are discernible. How to make dance work about this? How to document it? How to evaluate both?
'Nostalgia and hope stand equally in the way of authentic experience'. Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume
Past and future are indeterminants which collectively intervene in the present, 'now'. Meetings with people can be identified as manifestations of the present. The authentic present. My dance is based upon improvisation with all its authenticity, vagueries, 'becoming' moments and essential indeterminacy. How to make work using an approach which itself, is governed by indeterminacy, about concepts which themselves are also governed by indeterminacy?
My dance is another kind of flotsam. Purchase in the moment, while inevitably moving away. Despite prevailing conditions in the street which are laden with ambiguity, I need to prevail on a given moment and then capture it, hold it long enough to allow for recognition - to render the moment of purchase in a way which is accessible and then to pursue qualities which may express, contain or project an essence of 'leaving'.
How else may indeterminacy be determined?
More soon.
dict def: 'Indeterminacy principle' - a principle in quantum mechanics holding that it is impossible to determine, both the position and momentum of a particle at the same time' (Also called Heisenberg uncertainty principle).
def: 'Indeterminacy' as defined by Brian Massumi in the context of the body relative to its own indeterminate state, in Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Post-Contemporary Interventions), 2002, Duke University Press, p5, as: '... (its openness to an elsewhere and otherwise than it is, in any here and now).' (see previous November 07 post).
In my last post in November of 2007, I had reached a point of involvement with the notion that inexorably perhaps, we are affected by indeterminacy as a characteristic which underpins the nature and substance of our meetings with people in urban spaces.
On the main page of my blog I have included a quotation from Buddha:
‘What is the appropriate behaviour for a man or a woman in the midst of this world, where each person is clinging to his piece of debris? What`s the proper salutation between people as they pass each other in this flood?’ Buddha. Human Givens. vol 14, (3) Human Givens Publishing Ltd, East Sussex, England, UK
I am following a line of thought which posits that each meeting or encounter with another in the streets, is a moment of establishing a temporary purchase in the tide of humanity which surrounds us. A temporary purchase in time. How do we salute, greet, converse with one another in such an environment?
I am considering the alignment of the distinctly experiential and process-orientated realities of Henri Bergson, Brian Massumi and Len Lye (see November 2007 post) and their concepts of 'becoming' as opposed to
'being' with the above definition of the 'indeterminacy principle': the immutable integrity (soundness) of an apparently 'present' location perceived inseparably with that of its simultaneous already-generated momentum - on and away from its own 'present' state - a condition of constant erosion of that immutability within and of its so-called fixed position. An ever-diminished and renewed and re-diminished point of purchase. Is this a reality in urban spaces? Is this a fractal of our wider life or limited only to swift encounters in the street? Is the practice of our wider life as sentient beings in fact, ruled by indeterminacy - even within our so-called daily 'routines'? If so, does this imply that all the affairs of our lives are fated to be coloured by a vague sense of insecurity, uncertainty, an indefinable sense of something just missed?
Perhaps not. I am aware that the criteria and qualities of flux, momentum, departure, movement away, can be seen equally to juxtapose their opposites: pause, stasis, arrival, movement toward - and this describes a more optimistic perspective of human relations in urban precincts. Yet, I am not a pessimist by nature. Rather than viewing the two hemispheres of behaviour as competing with one another, one being 'better ' than the other, I prefer to perceive aspects of the latter existing in the former to create the whole. Not a negative viewpoint, but instead, an acknowledgement to the potency of change and indeed, time. The definition on indeterminacy above, makes clear the allegiance of matter to the concept of 'time'. Time, it might be said, adheres to corporeal, tangible matter which in turn is constantly affected by those things which 'time' decides to impact upon it. I cannot ignore aspects of time within my own response-making. Decisions must be made as to how to embed my observations, efforts and critiquing into a time-frame. (Hold that thought.)
I am faced with the possibilities and in turn, the challenges, that an immersion in this tide, within a given time-frame may provide for me. How do I make dance work about this paradoxical (in the sense that we also seem to gravitate towards people) - movement away existing in meetings between people in the street?
Why am I doing this? What is it that I find fascinating about encounters and exchanges between people which owe their allegiance, not to a baseline which relies upon a positive, if temporary communion; but a manifestation which could be said to be negative, symptomatic of loss, leaving and parting? So the communion is ephemeral, insubstantial, perhaps even ineffable - a mere perch, just out of reach of Buddha`s 'flood' and only temporary, at that.
To continue my side of the debate identified above, I am curious about the tensions existing in the fabric of this relationship: I choose to see every arrival containing the seeds of departure. Every arrival is swayed by an undercurrent of the momentum of leaving. As we engage with the process of arrival, we assert our presence/insert ourselves into a place, space, connection with someone, NOW. But 'now' is already in our wake. The present is already diminishing to materialise in the more encompassing state of 'becoming'. So 'becoming' is governed by almost anything which is non-static. Movement away - movement surely, toward the next ensuing moment and destination but movement away, nonetheless.
If I pursue this direction I may take it that each time we meet with and intend, apparently voluntarily, to converse with someone in the street, this meeting is suffused with uncertainty, the outcome hidden in a myriad of chance elements; the meeting may be said to be governed by efforts (or initially, choices) to reach out across the current, as it were, of indeterminacy to gain some kind of purchase through establishing some common ground, while simultaneously and unusually unwittingly, being in the act of 'becoming' - of moving away. I mention choices, yet, whether or not we choose to actively and fully engage with someone, I believe the 'climate' of each encounter is still mediated by uncertainty through change - and indeterminacy. Perhaps it is important to define here, associations between uncertainty and indeterminacy? For me, within the context of this research, indeterminants in the process of engagement give rise to uncertainty - uncertain outcomes and also a process of a simply, 'not-knowing' while the experience is unfolding. Under these conditions it is not surprising that sometimes people leave an encounter feeling unfulfilled, unless as sentient beings we are used to such a state from long practice.
What constitutes a meeting between people?
Chance/planning, agreement/disagreement, accord/dischord, protocols, personal and cultural imperatives/influences/prejudices/insights; the body and its needs, weather of feeling and outward manifestations like speech, expression and gesticulation; the climate of the day and of the moment; the desire to be here and to be elsewhere, both. Indeterminacy is present I believe, in all of the above and furnishes us with a subliminal level of movement away ... movement away from the person in front of us, movement away from the desire to be here, movement away from a moment of purchase.
It appears that indeterminacy is a catalyst for chaos, for discomfort, for uncertainty. Perhaps, but the focus on improvisation in my dance work also asserts that it is a liberating factor. An undercurrent which is ever-present but which can provide us with a truth - no thing is certain but that is all right. So perhaps while struggling to gain a purchase on the moment within a meeting, acceptance of this realisation - that each meeting moment is in a state of 'becoming' may assist us, not in struggling against, but instead, going with the waters in which we are immersed. Indeterminacy as mediator.
To make work from this I must document these moments of pause, in ways which are discernible. How to make dance work about this? How to document it? How to evaluate both?
'Nostalgia and hope stand equally in the way of authentic experience'. Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume
Past and future are indeterminants which collectively intervene in the present, 'now'. Meetings with people can be identified as manifestations of the present. The authentic present. My dance is based upon improvisation with all its authenticity, vagueries, 'becoming' moments and essential indeterminacy. How to make work using an approach which itself, is governed by indeterminacy, about concepts which themselves are also governed by indeterminacy?
My dance is another kind of flotsam. Purchase in the moment, while inevitably moving away. Despite prevailing conditions in the street which are laden with ambiguity, I need to prevail on a given moment and then capture it, hold it long enough to allow for recognition - to render the moment of purchase in a way which is accessible and then to pursue qualities which may express, contain or project an essence of 'leaving'.
How else may indeterminacy be determined?
More soon.
Monday, 19 November 2007
Indeterminacy as mediator / Dialogue as purchase while moving away ...
My aim with this post is to explore some fundamental connections between the respective views of:
Brian Massumi, in Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation
(Post-Contemporary Interventions), 2002, Duke University Press.
Extracts from Visualising experience: Henri Bergson on memory, (p. 57).
in Middleton, D and Brown, S. D. 2005. The Social Psychology of Experience. Studies in Remembering and Forgetting. Sage Publications Ltd, London, California, New Delhi.
Len Lye, in his 1939 essay, Movement as Language, in Epilogue 1935-1937.
Riding, L and Graves R. Edited by Mark Jacobs.
These texts are currently acting for me as a collective lasso around the elusive quarry of impromptu encounters and meetings with others.
In 1927, Henri Bergson, who had previously been hailed as both, ‘the greatest thinker in the world’ and ‘the most dangerous man in the world’ (Mullarkey, 1999b) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He has been a major influence on the thinking of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Levinas and Gilles Deleuze. Bergson is perhaps most widely known for his treatises on concepts of time and becoming. I am particularly interested in Bergson`s notions of time for his emphasis, as a ‘process philosopher’ on ‘lived’ and ‘experienced’ time and space.
Bergson, as a process philosopher, was concerned (unlike mainstream western philosophy which has dealt overwhelmingly with substantive content or ‘things’ which may be easily categorised perhaps, as nouns possessing tangible qualities rather than verbs which inherently reference ‘doing’) with the actions which bridge or give rise to the manifestation of content. He pursued the intangible, often residual glues binding content, concentrating on the experience of the event itself; activities like conversing, the tenuous dynamics of relationships between people, events like the experience of parenthood, losing a job or a loved one.
Bergson`s thinking traverses the territory from ‘being’ to ‘becoming’:
Being is the name typically given to those essentital qualites of a thing that do not change, those aspects that endure despite all temporary changes in appearance. Reality can then be defined by enquiry into the particular kind of “being” that a given entity has or expresses (this is what is usually called “ontology”)(p. 61).
‘Becoming’ for Bergson, was and remains quite a different way of defining reality. The word describes an action rather than a static, passive quality. It refers to a view of the world which is defined through motion which is continuous. This view can be encapsulated by the famous line from Heraclitus: ‘One cannot step into the same river twice’. So the only reality is constant change, flux, transformation – becoming. The things we perceive as ‘real’ and constant, reliable and set are only outcomes relative to our respective perceptions – they are not in themselves, reality per se, ‘ … the qualities of matter are so many stable views that we take of its instability’. ( Bergson, p. 61).
Bergson puts this very succinctly another way: '… rather than there being things which change', more accurately speaking, there is, '… change provisionally grasped as a thing'. (Bergson, p. 62). This realignment of perspective captures in essence the conditions (created by a movement dynamic), which both cause and govern indeterminacy which in turn is responsible I believe, for the ways in which meetings between people on the street are dominated by the phenomenon of ‘arriving’ and ‘leaving’. These words are redolent with implications which speak of change or ‘becoming’, itself momentarily grasped and lost, or places in time and space which punctuate change from which we ultimately move away.
In his 1939 Essay, Movement as Language, the New Zealand kinetic sculptor and avant-garde film-maker, Len Lye stated:
Movement is the result of a feeling in one thing of strong difference from other things. Movement is always one thing moving away from other things—not toward. And the result of movement is to be distinct from other things: the result of movement is form. The history of any definite form is the movement of which the form is the result. When we look at something and see the particular shape of it we are looking at its after-life. Its real life is the movement by which it got to be that shape.
This observation shares similar territory to Bergson`s maintaining that we live 'change' in a constant state of becoming and that we can only grasp and isolate moments provisionally within change itself.
In my previous post I referenced Brian Massumi in Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Post-Contemporary Interventions) (2002). Massumi states that:
When a body is in motion, it does not coincide with itself. It coincides with its own transition. The range of variations it can be implicated in is not present in any given movement, much less in any position it passes through. In motion, a body is in an immediate, unfolding relation to its own nonpresent potential to vary. That relation, to borrow a phrase from Gilles Deleuze, is real but abstract … This is an abstractness pertaining to the transitional immediacy of a real relation – that of a body to its own indeterminacy (its openness to an elsewhere and otherwise than it is, in any here and now) (p.5).
To what extent during our times ‘in-transit’ are we driven by a feeling of not so much arriving, but of leaving – continually moving on, away from the current meeting – often while we are still in that meeting? Are we always fully present in our exchanges or have we in fact in our intent, already left, while ostensibly maintaining our physical presence? In my own work, I am concerned with the investigation of what I will call the ‘spaces between content’ in our lived experience. In exploring what may constitute engagement and conversation on the street, I am not so much interested by what is being communicated, as what is being left out, due to what I identify as interpersonal terrain dominated by indeterminacy. It is indeterminacy, as Massumi states above, ‘… that of a body to its own indeterminacy (its openness to an elsewhere and otherwise than it is, in any here and now)’ which I believe continually mediates our meetings, our conversations, our interactions our becoming fully present with the place/person with whom/where we have ‘arrived’ when we have already begun in our constant state of becoming, to move away. I am interested how this uncertainty located within movement/change may influence or to a significant extent, govern the nature of dialogue in urban contexts.
In this text Middleton and Brown suggest that Bergson`s view of the world is a process which does not require qualifying, explaining or defining through the use of things of substance. They go further and suggest that perhaps it is inappropriate to think of reality as something which requires explanation. Reality is simply a, ‘fluid continuity of the real’, (Bergson, p. 62). I am curious about the ways in which the real and virtual may join to become what Mark Hansen in Bodies in Code (2006) defines as, ‘mixed reality’ and within the context of the above reference to Bergson, not only how this may exist as a ‘fluid continuity’ but how I may go about enacting and documenting the phenomenon.
Duration is the experience of time passing. Bergson describes duration as, '... the prolonging of the past into the present and the forms of experience that are thereby granted'. (p. 62). Bergson betrays in Duration and Simultaneity (1999: 30), (p.63 in Virtualising Experience) a classic perspective of a process philosophy approach to consciousness:
There is no doubt but that for us time is at first identical with the continuity of our inner life. What is this continuity? That of a flow or passage, but a self-sufficient flow or passage, the flow not implying a thing that flows, and the passing not presupposing states through which we pass; the thing and the state are only artificially chosen snapshots of the transition, all that is naturally experienced is duration itself.
In Bergson`s terms, the 'states' or 'things' are treated as outcomes or products by interrupting the flow.In my perspective within this context, the encounters and meetings with people in urban spaces represent an example of these outcomes. Such encounters enable a person to gain for a moment, a purchase on his or her duration or ongoing flow. Islands if you will, in time and space punctuating that continual indeterminate movement away.
(Bergson`s other publications which are relevant to my spheres of interest are Matter and Memory, (1908/1991), Time and Free Will (1913/2001) and Duration and Simultaneity, (1922). One of his later works, The Creative Mind (1946/1992), concentrates on his assertion that intuition is the most appropriate method of producing philosophical knowledge, that, ‘theory and knowledge and a theory of life seem to us inseparable’ (p. 58)).
Brian Massumi, in Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation
(Post-Contemporary Interventions), 2002, Duke University Press.
Extracts from Visualising experience: Henri Bergson on memory, (p. 57).
in Middleton, D and Brown, S. D. 2005. The Social Psychology of Experience. Studies in Remembering and Forgetting. Sage Publications Ltd, London, California, New Delhi.
Len Lye, in his 1939 essay, Movement as Language, in Epilogue 1935-1937.
Riding, L and Graves R. Edited by Mark Jacobs.
These texts are currently acting for me as a collective lasso around the elusive quarry of impromptu encounters and meetings with others.
In 1927, Henri Bergson, who had previously been hailed as both, ‘the greatest thinker in the world’ and ‘the most dangerous man in the world’ (Mullarkey, 1999b) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He has been a major influence on the thinking of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Levinas and Gilles Deleuze. Bergson is perhaps most widely known for his treatises on concepts of time and becoming. I am particularly interested in Bergson`s notions of time for his emphasis, as a ‘process philosopher’ on ‘lived’ and ‘experienced’ time and space.
Bergson, as a process philosopher, was concerned (unlike mainstream western philosophy which has dealt overwhelmingly with substantive content or ‘things’ which may be easily categorised perhaps, as nouns possessing tangible qualities rather than verbs which inherently reference ‘doing’) with the actions which bridge or give rise to the manifestation of content. He pursued the intangible, often residual glues binding content, concentrating on the experience of the event itself; activities like conversing, the tenuous dynamics of relationships between people, events like the experience of parenthood, losing a job or a loved one.
Bergson`s thinking traverses the territory from ‘being’ to ‘becoming’:
Being is the name typically given to those essentital qualites of a thing that do not change, those aspects that endure despite all temporary changes in appearance. Reality can then be defined by enquiry into the particular kind of “being” that a given entity has or expresses (this is what is usually called “ontology”)(p. 61).
‘Becoming’ for Bergson, was and remains quite a different way of defining reality. The word describes an action rather than a static, passive quality. It refers to a view of the world which is defined through motion which is continuous. This view can be encapsulated by the famous line from Heraclitus: ‘One cannot step into the same river twice’. So the only reality is constant change, flux, transformation – becoming. The things we perceive as ‘real’ and constant, reliable and set are only outcomes relative to our respective perceptions – they are not in themselves, reality per se, ‘ … the qualities of matter are so many stable views that we take of its instability’. ( Bergson, p. 61).
Bergson puts this very succinctly another way: '… rather than there being things which change', more accurately speaking, there is, '… change provisionally grasped as a thing'. (Bergson, p. 62). This realignment of perspective captures in essence the conditions (created by a movement dynamic), which both cause and govern indeterminacy which in turn is responsible I believe, for the ways in which meetings between people on the street are dominated by the phenomenon of ‘arriving’ and ‘leaving’. These words are redolent with implications which speak of change or ‘becoming’, itself momentarily grasped and lost, or places in time and space which punctuate change from which we ultimately move away.
In his 1939 Essay, Movement as Language, the New Zealand kinetic sculptor and avant-garde film-maker, Len Lye stated:
Movement is the result of a feeling in one thing of strong difference from other things. Movement is always one thing moving away from other things—not toward. And the result of movement is to be distinct from other things: the result of movement is form. The history of any definite form is the movement of which the form is the result. When we look at something and see the particular shape of it we are looking at its after-life. Its real life is the movement by which it got to be that shape.
This observation shares similar territory to Bergson`s maintaining that we live 'change' in a constant state of becoming and that we can only grasp and isolate moments provisionally within change itself.
In my previous post I referenced Brian Massumi in Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Post-Contemporary Interventions) (2002). Massumi states that:
When a body is in motion, it does not coincide with itself. It coincides with its own transition. The range of variations it can be implicated in is not present in any given movement, much less in any position it passes through. In motion, a body is in an immediate, unfolding relation to its own nonpresent potential to vary. That relation, to borrow a phrase from Gilles Deleuze, is real but abstract … This is an abstractness pertaining to the transitional immediacy of a real relation – that of a body to its own indeterminacy (its openness to an elsewhere and otherwise than it is, in any here and now) (p.5).
To what extent during our times ‘in-transit’ are we driven by a feeling of not so much arriving, but of leaving – continually moving on, away from the current meeting – often while we are still in that meeting? Are we always fully present in our exchanges or have we in fact in our intent, already left, while ostensibly maintaining our physical presence? In my own work, I am concerned with the investigation of what I will call the ‘spaces between content’ in our lived experience. In exploring what may constitute engagement and conversation on the street, I am not so much interested by what is being communicated, as what is being left out, due to what I identify as interpersonal terrain dominated by indeterminacy. It is indeterminacy, as Massumi states above, ‘… that of a body to its own indeterminacy (its openness to an elsewhere and otherwise than it is, in any here and now)’ which I believe continually mediates our meetings, our conversations, our interactions our becoming fully present with the place/person with whom/where we have ‘arrived’ when we have already begun in our constant state of becoming, to move away. I am interested how this uncertainty located within movement/change may influence or to a significant extent, govern the nature of dialogue in urban contexts.
In this text Middleton and Brown suggest that Bergson`s view of the world is a process which does not require qualifying, explaining or defining through the use of things of substance. They go further and suggest that perhaps it is inappropriate to think of reality as something which requires explanation. Reality is simply a, ‘fluid continuity of the real’, (Bergson, p. 62). I am curious about the ways in which the real and virtual may join to become what Mark Hansen in Bodies in Code (2006) defines as, ‘mixed reality’ and within the context of the above reference to Bergson, not only how this may exist as a ‘fluid continuity’ but how I may go about enacting and documenting the phenomenon.
Duration is the experience of time passing. Bergson describes duration as, '... the prolonging of the past into the present and the forms of experience that are thereby granted'. (p. 62). Bergson betrays in Duration and Simultaneity (1999: 30), (p.63 in Virtualising Experience) a classic perspective of a process philosophy approach to consciousness:
There is no doubt but that for us time is at first identical with the continuity of our inner life. What is this continuity? That of a flow or passage, but a self-sufficient flow or passage, the flow not implying a thing that flows, and the passing not presupposing states through which we pass; the thing and the state are only artificially chosen snapshots of the transition, all that is naturally experienced is duration itself.
In Bergson`s terms, the 'states' or 'things' are treated as outcomes or products by interrupting the flow.In my perspective within this context, the encounters and meetings with people in urban spaces represent an example of these outcomes. Such encounters enable a person to gain for a moment, a purchase on his or her duration or ongoing flow. Islands if you will, in time and space punctuating that continual indeterminate movement away.
(Bergson`s other publications which are relevant to my spheres of interest are Matter and Memory, (1908/1991), Time and Free Will (1913/2001) and Duration and Simultaneity, (1922). One of his later works, The Creative Mind (1946/1992), concentrates on his assertion that intuition is the most appropriate method of producing philosophical knowledge, that, ‘theory and knowledge and a theory of life seem to us inseparable’ (p. 58)).
Tuesday, 23 October 2007
Missed conversations in urban spaces - the body as 'stage'.
'Perhaps speech-in-transit is itself ... indeterminate. In a sense, one could say that the environment or ‘stage’ for my work, rather than a commuter-busy passageway, is more accurately the actual, moving body itself.' (MB, this post, 20.10.07)
These posts are passages which to some extent are contextualizing my current thinking on my concepts:
The first is an extract from Brian Massumi`s (2002) impressive text: Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Post-Contemporary Interventions), Duke University Press (p. 4). Here, I am seeking both, corroboration and challenge for my thinking in relation to how it may be possible to encounter the virtual in our everyday lives.
The second extract is from the paper, Remembering Praxis: Performance in the Digital Age, (2005) in Text and Performance Quarterly, 25:2 (p. 156-170) by Marcyrose Chvasta. Chvasta`s essay very succinctly interrogates 'liveness' within performance in relation to mediation and how it is becoming increasingly informed and alternatively contextualized through mediation from a range of apparently limitless sources, not the least of which is digital new media.
I have for some time occupied a place which has been investigating the notion that perhaps the 'real' is actually mediated by the virtual, all the time and everywhere. These two extracts support this notion.
Brian Massumi:
‘When a body is in motion, it does not coincide with itself. It coincides with its own transition. The range of variations it can be implicated in is not present in any given movement, much less in any position it passes through. In motion, a body is in an immediate, unfolding relation to its own nonpresent potential to vary. That relation, to borrow a phrase from Gilles Deleuze, is real but abstract … This is an abstractness pertaining to the transitional immediacy of a real relation – that of a body to its own indeterminacy (its openness to an elsewhere and otherwise than it is, in any here and now)’ (Massumi, 2002, p.5).
Other referenced texts for this project have been underpinned by a concern in relation to the body, for what could be termed parallel, or simultaneously manifesting entities. Evidence that we are not alone in the everyday of our lives. This notion for me is supported in Massumi`s exploration of the ‘indeterminacy’ of the body – the realities facing the body which are incomplete without the recognition of another, constantly simultaneously-generated virtual description of ‘now’. Massumi posits that ‘this body’ is here, but also, ‘this presence’ and essentially when in motion, they are no longer with us, here, but ‘over there’, now - ‘… the body does not coincide with itself …’ (Massumi, 2002, p. 5). The above quotation is relevant for my research practice with its focus upon the nature of movement itself, a phenomenon (one could otherwise, perhaps describe movement as a process or sequence of interminably-linked events) which is inevitably coloured and controlled by what could be said to be a force outside almost everything, but which equally, is integral to all: Time. Time is relational, everywhere and always a governing factor in the ongoing manifestation and expression of our bodies and our ‘selves’, in motion and in transit.
Massumi suggests that the body in movement means accepting the body in its occupation of space and time, as a paradox: that there is an incorporeal dimension of the body itself. Of it, but not it. Indeterminate, coincident, but real and material. Massumi calls this echo a, ‘Fellow-travelling dimension of the same reality’, (Massumi, 2002, p. 5). A legitimate interpretation of identifiable alterity, I believe. Massumi points out in my original quotation above, that, ‘In motion, a body is in an immediate, unfolding relation to its own nonpresent potential to vary’. In other words, it could be said that the body in motion is never, ever, quite fully present. Or that the body is present but within its indeterminacy, the time-based embodiment of ‘body’ has already moved on. This assertion as a concept, is interesting to consider in the context of my ‘in-transit’ dominated practice and offers a framework for speculation about the reasons for what so much of the time are the expression of truncated, disjunct forms of communication in the street. Perhaps speech-in-transit is itself as a result of this, indeterminate. In a sense, one could say that the environment or ‘stage’ for my work, rather than a commuter-busy passageway, is more accurately the actual, moving body itself. Massumi asserts that this disjunct in embodiment – this nonpresent potential to vary, creates a wider re-defining of ontological difference away from a linguistic differentiation which instead, becomes orientated around process, potential and event and directs this into the heart of the body. The body`s potential to vary suggests an alignment which places ‘being’ next to becoming. To re-iterate and re-interpret the substance of the above text then; our ontological existence can be defined by the idea that we are in a continual state of being/becoming – a time-based positioning. In qualifying his argument, Massumi paraphrases Deleuze in saying that the problem with dominant modes of cultural and literary theory are not that they are too abstract to grasp the solidity or corporeal fabric of the real. The problem is that these modes are not abstract enough to grasp the real incorporeality of what we take to be real.
Marcyrose Chvasta:
‘Performing arts as in theatre/drama/live-art performance more than any other field of study save perhaps sports, inevitably puts at its core “live performance”. Indeed, the co-presence of live bodies has been a defining feature of performance. It is in the practice of performance, however, that this proclaimed ontological feature has been challenged for years’ (Chvasta, 2005, p.160).
According to Marcyrose Chvasta, Philip Auslander has argued convincingly that ‘all performance—if not electronically mediated—is mediated by language of some kind. Because language mediates our experiences, any presentation of one’s self is not one’s Self.’ Auslander employs Derrida to argue that the ‘mind cannot communicate the body without being defined by the rules of language as a system of difference, and the body cannot express the mind without being defined by its system of differences’ (Auslander, 1996 quoted in Chvasta, 2005, p.168).
In short, and I concur with this view, any presentation of self ‘live’ or ‘mediated’ - is mediated somehow. Every mediation is intertextual, containing a multiplicity of texts that are mediations in themselves. By extension then, any ‘live’ performance is a mediated performance. It just depends on the language of that mediation and the vocabulary used to express that language. The work may be comprised of any number of technical dance steps or states. Signing for the deaf may be used, or cross-disciplinary media, the spoken word, the written text, classical word, txting text or semaphore, costuming or digital new media. Each represents a signification of mediation.
In her essay Remembering Praxis: Performance in the Digital Age questioning the current demarcations between live and mediated performance, Chvasta also cites Steve Dixon, who has developed performances that interrogate performance theory itself, his work leading to insights that serve both traditional and more contemporary conceptualizations of the performer and audience. For Dixon, there is no power differential between the live and the mediated body. According to Dixon, both are equally forceful embodiments of human experience. Like Dixon, I question the extent to which that rarefied atmosphere of ‘pure’, live dance performance is placed above mediated dance performance. Between virtual videos of live performance works, internet mashup sites empowering the public to create their own virtual performances from a selection of available sources, fully immersive worlds like Second Life where ‘live’ virtual performances are carried out in real time, the boundaries defining what constitutes legitimate ‘live’ performance work have never been so blurred. In my own work I am investigating ways in which the ‘virtual’ may manifest as an extension or transformative moment in time of the ‘real’, rather than simply its binary opposite.
Chvasta states that Pierre Levy defines four ontological elements: the real, the possible, the actual, and the virtual. Each of these elements—or ‘vectors,’ in Levy’s terms—operates ‘almost always’ in conjunction with the others. Levy is interested in these vectors as unstable modes of existence. I am interested in these vectors for their potential to determine transformative embodiment. How they may offer a way of understanding how the virtual or ‘possible’ may have an osmotic role in the real, rather than one which is clearly differentiated.
Chvasta asserts that Levy is interested in ‘the process of transformation from one mode of being to another’ (Levy, 1998 quoted in Chvasta, 2005, p.165) which perhaps is the enactment of that osmotic role. I am also interested in these vectors as descriptors of the ‘possible’ – states of a present which is not passive but dynamic, the present as a state which is always becoming. Specifically, according to Levy, he engages in the ‘study of virtualization that ascends from the real or the actual toward the virtual’ (Levy, 1998, quoted in Chvasta, 2005, p.165). While the real is orientated in the present, in the temporal and spatial sense of the term, the virtual is orientated in the future.
This speaks to me of the virtual residing neither ‘here’ nor ‘there.’ It lies in-between and mediation within performance can be viewed as an instrument which allows us to perhaps more readily recognize embodiment in the virtual in our respective realities.
These posts are passages which to some extent are contextualizing my current thinking on my concepts:
The first is an extract from Brian Massumi`s (2002) impressive text: Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Post-Contemporary Interventions), Duke University Press (p. 4). Here, I am seeking both, corroboration and challenge for my thinking in relation to how it may be possible to encounter the virtual in our everyday lives.
The second extract is from the paper, Remembering Praxis: Performance in the Digital Age, (2005) in Text and Performance Quarterly, 25:2 (p. 156-170) by Marcyrose Chvasta. Chvasta`s essay very succinctly interrogates 'liveness' within performance in relation to mediation and how it is becoming increasingly informed and alternatively contextualized through mediation from a range of apparently limitless sources, not the least of which is digital new media.
I have for some time occupied a place which has been investigating the notion that perhaps the 'real' is actually mediated by the virtual, all the time and everywhere. These two extracts support this notion.
Brian Massumi:
‘When a body is in motion, it does not coincide with itself. It coincides with its own transition. The range of variations it can be implicated in is not present in any given movement, much less in any position it passes through. In motion, a body is in an immediate, unfolding relation to its own nonpresent potential to vary. That relation, to borrow a phrase from Gilles Deleuze, is real but abstract … This is an abstractness pertaining to the transitional immediacy of a real relation – that of a body to its own indeterminacy (its openness to an elsewhere and otherwise than it is, in any here and now)’ (Massumi, 2002, p.5).
Other referenced texts for this project have been underpinned by a concern in relation to the body, for what could be termed parallel, or simultaneously manifesting entities. Evidence that we are not alone in the everyday of our lives. This notion for me is supported in Massumi`s exploration of the ‘indeterminacy’ of the body – the realities facing the body which are incomplete without the recognition of another, constantly simultaneously-generated virtual description of ‘now’. Massumi posits that ‘this body’ is here, but also, ‘this presence’ and essentially when in motion, they are no longer with us, here, but ‘over there’, now - ‘… the body does not coincide with itself …’ (Massumi, 2002, p. 5). The above quotation is relevant for my research practice with its focus upon the nature of movement itself, a phenomenon (one could otherwise, perhaps describe movement as a process or sequence of interminably-linked events) which is inevitably coloured and controlled by what could be said to be a force outside almost everything, but which equally, is integral to all: Time. Time is relational, everywhere and always a governing factor in the ongoing manifestation and expression of our bodies and our ‘selves’, in motion and in transit.
Massumi suggests that the body in movement means accepting the body in its occupation of space and time, as a paradox: that there is an incorporeal dimension of the body itself. Of it, but not it. Indeterminate, coincident, but real and material. Massumi calls this echo a, ‘Fellow-travelling dimension of the same reality’, (Massumi, 2002, p. 5). A legitimate interpretation of identifiable alterity, I believe. Massumi points out in my original quotation above, that, ‘In motion, a body is in an immediate, unfolding relation to its own nonpresent potential to vary’. In other words, it could be said that the body in motion is never, ever, quite fully present. Or that the body is present but within its indeterminacy, the time-based embodiment of ‘body’ has already moved on. This assertion as a concept, is interesting to consider in the context of my ‘in-transit’ dominated practice and offers a framework for speculation about the reasons for what so much of the time are the expression of truncated, disjunct forms of communication in the street. Perhaps speech-in-transit is itself as a result of this, indeterminate. In a sense, one could say that the environment or ‘stage’ for my work, rather than a commuter-busy passageway, is more accurately the actual, moving body itself. Massumi asserts that this disjunct in embodiment – this nonpresent potential to vary, creates a wider re-defining of ontological difference away from a linguistic differentiation which instead, becomes orientated around process, potential and event and directs this into the heart of the body. The body`s potential to vary suggests an alignment which places ‘being’ next to becoming. To re-iterate and re-interpret the substance of the above text then; our ontological existence can be defined by the idea that we are in a continual state of being/becoming – a time-based positioning. In qualifying his argument, Massumi paraphrases Deleuze in saying that the problem with dominant modes of cultural and literary theory are not that they are too abstract to grasp the solidity or corporeal fabric of the real. The problem is that these modes are not abstract enough to grasp the real incorporeality of what we take to be real.
Marcyrose Chvasta:
‘Performing arts as in theatre/drama/live-art performance more than any other field of study save perhaps sports, inevitably puts at its core “live performance”. Indeed, the co-presence of live bodies has been a defining feature of performance. It is in the practice of performance, however, that this proclaimed ontological feature has been challenged for years’ (Chvasta, 2005, p.160).
According to Marcyrose Chvasta, Philip Auslander has argued convincingly that ‘all performance—if not electronically mediated—is mediated by language of some kind. Because language mediates our experiences, any presentation of one’s self is not one’s Self.’ Auslander employs Derrida to argue that the ‘mind cannot communicate the body without being defined by the rules of language as a system of difference, and the body cannot express the mind without being defined by its system of differences’ (Auslander, 1996 quoted in Chvasta, 2005, p.168).
In short, and I concur with this view, any presentation of self ‘live’ or ‘mediated’ - is mediated somehow. Every mediation is intertextual, containing a multiplicity of texts that are mediations in themselves. By extension then, any ‘live’ performance is a mediated performance. It just depends on the language of that mediation and the vocabulary used to express that language. The work may be comprised of any number of technical dance steps or states. Signing for the deaf may be used, or cross-disciplinary media, the spoken word, the written text, classical word, txting text or semaphore, costuming or digital new media. Each represents a signification of mediation.
In her essay Remembering Praxis: Performance in the Digital Age questioning the current demarcations between live and mediated performance, Chvasta also cites Steve Dixon, who has developed performances that interrogate performance theory itself, his work leading to insights that serve both traditional and more contemporary conceptualizations of the performer and audience. For Dixon, there is no power differential between the live and the mediated body. According to Dixon, both are equally forceful embodiments of human experience. Like Dixon, I question the extent to which that rarefied atmosphere of ‘pure’, live dance performance is placed above mediated dance performance. Between virtual videos of live performance works, internet mashup sites empowering the public to create their own virtual performances from a selection of available sources, fully immersive worlds like Second Life where ‘live’ virtual performances are carried out in real time, the boundaries defining what constitutes legitimate ‘live’ performance work have never been so blurred. In my own work I am investigating ways in which the ‘virtual’ may manifest as an extension or transformative moment in time of the ‘real’, rather than simply its binary opposite.
Chvasta states that Pierre Levy defines four ontological elements: the real, the possible, the actual, and the virtual. Each of these elements—or ‘vectors,’ in Levy’s terms—operates ‘almost always’ in conjunction with the others. Levy is interested in these vectors as unstable modes of existence. I am interested in these vectors for their potential to determine transformative embodiment. How they may offer a way of understanding how the virtual or ‘possible’ may have an osmotic role in the real, rather than one which is clearly differentiated.
Chvasta asserts that Levy is interested in ‘the process of transformation from one mode of being to another’ (Levy, 1998 quoted in Chvasta, 2005, p.165) which perhaps is the enactment of that osmotic role. I am also interested in these vectors as descriptors of the ‘possible’ – states of a present which is not passive but dynamic, the present as a state which is always becoming. Specifically, according to Levy, he engages in the ‘study of virtualization that ascends from the real or the actual toward the virtual’ (Levy, 1998, quoted in Chvasta, 2005, p.165). While the real is orientated in the present, in the temporal and spatial sense of the term, the virtual is orientated in the future.
This speaks to me of the virtual residing neither ‘here’ nor ‘there.’ It lies in-between and mediation within performance can be viewed as an instrument which allows us to perhaps more readily recognize embodiment in the virtual in our respective realities.
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